


The Piercing Shop (and the Bench of Banishment)

by Kai_Lu



Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: And Kaishin friendship, Aoko barely talks, Attempt at Humor, But if you squint I guess?, Gen, How Do I Tag, Humor, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I am so sorry, I forgot American spelling exists so I was like ???? where is humour??, Keiko doesn't even talk, Kudou Shinichi | Edogawa Conan & Mouri Ran Friendship, No Romance, Piercing parlour, Post-Black Organization Takedown (Meitantei Conan), Post-Canon, Post-Conan Kudou Shinichi, Rip Magic Kaito fans, So Shinichi and Ran aren't dating, Sorry guys, Unbeta'd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:22:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23984521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kai_Lu/pseuds/Kai_Lu
Summary: Ran looked like she was ready to either cave her own skull in or to fall into a dogeza and beg Sonoko to never speak ever again. “Sonoko. I just want to get a piercing, a normal piercing.” She even motioned to the appropriate parts of her body. “I don’t want a piercing for down there. Especially down there.”For their upcoming graduation, Shinichi is dragged along by the girls to accompany them to a piercing parlour. He doesn't want to be there, but then in walks another trio of highschoolers.
Relationships: Kudou Shinichi | Edogawa Conan & Kuroba Kaito | Kaitou Kid, Kudou Shinichi | Edogawa Conan & Mouri Ran, Kudou Shinichi | Edogawa Conan & Suzuki Sonoko, Kuroba Kaito | Kaitou Kid & Nakamori Aoko, Momoi Keiko & Nakamori Aoko
Comments: 9
Kudos: 63





	The Piercing Shop (and the Bench of Banishment)

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a true story, bro it was so unreal you had to be there :)

Sonoko and Ran continued to quietly bicker amongst themselves whilst glancing at the displays along the wall. 

“Come on Ran! Live a little.” The young heiress was relentless in her elbowing and pointing. Beside her, Ran’s face was splashed with a fluttering pink that continued to further stain her cheeks. Scandalised, Ran hissed in adamant refusal.

“I am not getting a-” the karate practitioner glanced around for any potential eavesdroppers and dropped into a whisper, “a genital piercing!” The blonde cackled shamelessly, grinning from ear to ear. 

Shinichi blankly stared from his place on the black ottoman bench. The novel carefully placed on his lap, his tired eyes silently reflected his question. ‘Why am I here?’ However, the two resumed their squabbling in favour of ignoring him. 

Shinichi never asked for this. 

But apparently, disguising yourself as a six-year-old from a fictional branch of your family for two years equates to tacit agreement (read: silently threatened) on going along for a trip to a piercing shop.

Shinichi couldn’t argue with that logic.

“You know you want that clit piercing.” God, did Shinichi wish that the C4 from one of his cases had gone off and blown out his eardrums permanently. Whilst he may have once fostered non-platonic feelings for his childhood friend before his ‘free but with strings attached dip in the fountain of youth’. He currently did not wish to know, under any circumstances, whether or not she would undergo such procedure for the sake of fashion or aesthetics. 

No thank you. Very much. And because his mother was brutal in his upbringing with manners, please. Shinichi would very much prefer to currently be in the comfort of his bed just about now. He knew that he would regret those all-nighters sooner or later. But it wouldn’t be a very good idea to try to flee from the scene right now. His mother also beat into him some form of, even if seemingly little, survival instincts.

Ran looked like she was ready to either cave her own skull in or to fall into a dogeza and beg Sonoko to never speak ever again. “Sonoko. I just want to get a piercing, a normal piercing.” She even motioned to the appropriate parts of her body. “I don’t want a piercing for down there. Especially down there.” 

Sonoko pouted and hummed in thought. “Then what about a belly button piercing? By the time of graduation, it will be almost summer. That’s when we can go to the beach!” Another thought passed her mind. “After this, we can go buy some cute swimsuits! Of course, something that matches with the piercing because I am not letting my hot friend walk around, risking her potential to hook in the hotties all because her piercing is clashing with her swimsuit.” 

Ran looked unsure at her friend’s suggestion, and Shinichi is no disloyal friend because he is not about to tell Sonoko that Ran is actually agreeing with her. He would also not say a word because he would rather prevent any chances of losing the function of his limbs after painstakingly suffering through the much-needed physical therapy after a two-month-long stay at the hospital post-take-down. 

So when Ran does turn to him in search of his opinion, Shinichi decides to go with the safe approach. “Navel piercings can take up to three to six months, even a whole year, to fully heal. I don’t think it would be best to take a trip to the beach so soon after doing so.” Informative but also kind of agreeing and useless. Just what she needs. “On the decision to have one or not, it is up to you. It is your body and your decision.” Shinichi yawns.

The blonde took a moment to ponder on Shinichi’s input before making her response. “See Ran, it’s not a no. Even Shinichi-kun thinks you would rock a belly button piercing.” Ran sighs but nods at her friend’s words. “I guess we’ll just have to postpone our annual trip to the beach though.”

Nearly theatrical in her acceptance of getting a navel piercing, Ran decides to list through the various pros and cons of getting one. “I can see the appeal, and I do want to get something memorable for graduation. But if dad finds out, he is going to flip.” Shinichi agrees to that point. The elder Mouri would most definitely throw a fit at the very thought, let alone the sight, of his daughter having a pierced belly button.

The conversation was instantly derailed when Sonoko made a joke about the possibility of Ran’s mother getting one of her own in an attempt to mend the relationship between Ran’s parents. The regrettable part of the joke is that Ran began to take the joke as a serious idea to try and get her parents back together again.

Thus, turning from the train wreck of a conversation that is in front of him, Shinichi looked in the other direction. In the corner of his peripheral vision, he saw other prospective customers entering the shop. A boy and two girls who appeared to be about his age. They only differed in the fact that their uniforms were the tradition gakuran and sailor uniform. 

Shinichi humoured the thought of the trio to be like him and his friends and prayed a silent prayer for the boy who was dragged along by his two female friends.

This was very quickly shot down when the boy made a beeline to the display cabinet featuring gauge piercings. Loudly, he called over his friends to look. “Aoko! You should get these for your firsties.” The brunette of the group flushed at the jovial look on the boy’s face.

“Oh my- shush!” Aoko increased her pace and slammed the hand over the boy’s mouth. Her other hand grabbed the boy by the collar of his gakuran and dragged him away from the display. Their third friend, a glasses-wearing girl sighed in a way that told Shinichi that such interaction between the two was a common occurrence.

Shinichi felt bad for her. He continued to feel bad as he eavesdropped on their conversation. It was way more interesting than the book that was in his hands right now. After all, this outing wasn’t exactly one that he was given any prior warning to. So, when he was banished to the bench without his phone, which was also taken from him to stop any attempts to call someone to rescue him. Sonoko threw the first book she could find at him and told him to ‘shut up and be a good friend and sit on the bench or Ran will break your legs’. 

Unfortunately, the book is a biography on Janet Hanselton’s various misfortunes in her marriages and divorces throughout her lifetime, before dying a lonely and tragic death. Maybe Sonoko had put some more thought in when finding him a book on the way to the piercing parlour. Perhaps it is a silent warning that his failure of a ‘relationship’ with Ran is going to end in his own lonely and tragic death. How quaint.

Aoko yanked back her hand as if she had accidentally grabbed the wrong side of the kettle – a feeling Shinichi is very well acquainted with, an example being this morning – and was about to let out a shriek until the boy silenced her with his hand. “Aoko, we are in a shop with fellow shoppers who are trying to do their shopping.”

The girl viciously scratched at the offending hand and glared at the male who only smiled at her attempt to remove his hand. The glasses-wearing girl who was accompanying them made no move to separate the two and was already looking at another display which was for ordinary ear piercings. 

She had skipped the step of being the peacekeeper, most likely already too well aware that her efforts would be for naught. Shinichi felt that and muffled another yawn.

Grinning despite Aoko’s heated glare, the boy wagged a finger as he spoke. “You know. You are a very cute girl Aoko. But if you continue to behave like some fire-ant bitten gorilla in a barbershop, you are going to get kicked out.” Shinichi in his very unordinary life had never heard such comparison before. As unorthodox it was, yes, the advice was still apparent.

Having enough, Aoko kicked the boy in the shin, who dodged and pulled back his hand. She hissed furiously to the target and reason for her rage. “You’re the one who decided to start shouting first. And you licked my hand! Do you know how gross that is? We were on the train before, and that is a lot of germs that are on my hands! Do you want to get sick again?” She’s misplaced her focus but Shinichi acknowledges that the girl has the spirit. “Go wash your mouth and just sit at the bench or something. Keiko-chan and I will look at the earrings.”

The unnamed boy let out a snicker and made his way over to the bench after doing so. Shinichi politely shifted to the side and nodded at the other when their eyes met. What a familiar hue of blue. Solidarity of being the only two men in the entire store and being banished to the bench.

He decided to turn back to his pair of friends. Ran was dragging Sonoko away from the idea of getting her own genital piercing. How did they get back to that topic of conversation, Shinichi didn’t know. Apparently, she wanted to scare her boyfriend into giving him a stroke so he would at least stay in the same place for long enough and not unintentionally flee to another prefecture for another tournament.

Shinichi pities the man that is Kyogoku Makoto.

He was sooner or later startled out of the dumpster fire that was Janet’s fourth marriage when the boy from earlier made an exclamation from his side of the bench. It had only been about five minutes since he last spoke. 

“Oh my god! Why not get nipple piercings? Once blondie tears off your top, his brain would cease to function and he would spontaneously combust the moment his eyes make the first contact with them.” 

(If you were to carefully look into the brunet’s eyes for long enough, you would have seen the exact moment when he had realised the implications of the words that flew out of his mouth. Crashing and burning, his face minutely screwed up in slight disgust as he went through the seven stages of grief – speed run edition, before blinking out of his stupor. He easily grins and silently pretends he had never made such implication that his friend was having anything sexual with a blond.)

“Two birds with one stone. You get your piercings and I can finally get rid of that long time pain in the ass.” 

If humans were capable of supernatural feats such as psychokinesis, Shinichi was sure that he would have a homicide on their hands. He could already imagine the tabloid articles, ‘local teen eviscerated in the Haido piercing parlour by a furious friend(?) after opening his mouth for the nth to say something stupid’. 

“Kaito I swear to god. I will shove these piercings down your throat if you utter another word.”

The now dubbed Kaito mimicked the motion of zipping his lips and pulled out a deck of cards to shuffle. In an attempt of forgetting the spectacle that had just occurred, Shinichi returned to the paragraph where the writer begins to go into depth about how Janet’s cries were like that of a harpooned narwhal on the rocky beaches of the English shore. How and why was this published, Shinichi did not know.

Barely aware of the time passing by, his friends had finally settled between the best four choices of a navel piercing for Ran. It was during this moment that Kaito had decided to speak to the male beside him. “Hey. Why are you in this kind of place?”

Looking up from his place on the page, Shinichi rose an eyebrow. “The same as you, I presume.” Now looking closer, a near-identical face to his own mimicked the motion. “You’re here with your childhood friend and her bestie to get her first set of piercings but got banished to the silent bench because she didn’t like your suggestions?”

Leaving a place holder, Shinichi lowered the book, which he hated to admit but had begun to become more interesting as it progressed. “Not quite, but around about the same gist.” Staring for perhaps a fraction of a second longer than acceptable, Shinichi tilted his head to the side. “Do I know you from somewhere?” Kaito blinks in confusion.

“I would think not.” He then grins and lets out a wink. “I wouldn’t exactly forget such a handsome face.” Shinichi stared back in apprehension at the statement. He was unsure whether to point out the fact that the two of them have an incredibly similar facial structure, thus, such a statement is a touch narcissistic. 

Or the fact that getting hit on by a stranger isn’t something Shinichi associates as a good thing because most of the time it is either a psychopath or a paedophile. But since he isn’t exactly a third of his height right now, he ignores the latter.

“Well, if you keep in mind that the two of us seem to have an incredibly similar facial structure. I would find that your comment sounds a touch on the side of narcissism.” Shinichi waited for a response from the other as they did not falter in their apparent amusement.

Kaito shifts his cards into one hand and begins to shuffle them. His other comes to rest at his chin as he grins. “Well, I see no harm in such comment. I say that it is just a healthy touch of self-love.” The cards in his hand start to fly into faster motion. “Afterall, we are currently living in a world where such forms of love are often determined as either unhealthy or unwanted, and anyone baring such love is frequently shamed for such a mindset.”

How curious. For such babble from earlier, Kaito seems to have a much more hidden intellectual edge about him. “I see,” is the only reply Shinichi has to offer and as abruptly the conversation started, it died in the same manner. 

Shinichi read on about Janet’s leaden descent into madness as her sixth husband was murdered by her third. Whom of which was driven by fervent envy and had later committed suicide out of anguish when he realised that he was truly envious of Janet as he had fallen for the sixth husband instead. The woman was sent to a local institution due to debilitating shock. 

Fate then played a hand when the institute was burned down by the doctor in charge of Janet. His act of arson was apparently a notion of his burning passion and interest in her – unbeknownst to her, it was because he found her to be a perfect candidate for psychiatric research – and fled with her to the neighbouring isles. How romantic.

Again, he would hate to admit this, but the inclusion of the substantial happenings of crime had kept him interested in this book – of course, he keeps in mind that this is an autobiography, thus it is on true life events. But again, he would not admit this aloud. Who knew that such a woman was so surrounded by tragedy and plot twists. Shinichi has no say on his own life, however.

Partway through reading the doctor’s notes of Janet’s inane ramblings, Ran came over to the bench. “Hey, Shinichi! I finally made a decision.” She then held up a small box which contained her chosen piercing. “What do you think?” It was an amethyst gemstone that was in the shape of a heart and had a pair of silver wings. Shinichi gave a thumbs up.

Rolling her eyes at the bland response, Ran continued to speak. “Sonoko is currently handing in our forms of consent and agreement. So we’re going to go into the rooms once our names are called.” Shinichi gave a nod. He could see the heiress make her way over as well.

With her box of piercings in hand, she grinned, but her expression took a swift exit to stage left when she noticed Kaito on the bench as well. “Oh my god. Are you guys twins?” In very Suzuki manner, the girl had grabbed the boys by their shoulders and shoved (read: slammed) the two together, cheeks touching.

Shinichi huffs in annoyance at the blatant manhandling. “We have already established between the two of us that we are not related to the slightest.” Kaito who was still pressed beside him nods in agreement. “It was kind of shocking at first but I know for a fact that my parents are single children.” He yet continues to smile despite the awkward situation.

Ran begins to spew apologies as she pulls back Sonoko. “I’m sorry about that. Sonoko apologise!” She pinches the other. “You don’t just suddenly grab a stranger like that.” Sonoko pouts and rubs the new sore spot. Shinichi only rolls his eyes at the display in front of him.

“Well, if I were to introduce myself. We wouldn’t be exactly strangers anymore, now would we?” Kaito’s eyes gleam for a moment and Shinichi catches himself staring. Why were they so familiar? “The name’s Kuroba Kaito. What are your names, ladies? I already know of Shinichi-san here.” Shinichi raises an eyebrow again.

Ran blinks at Kuroba’s words and gives a disarming smile. “I’m Mouri Ran. It’s nice to meet you, Kuroba-kun.” Sonoko also joins to give her introduction but then asks, “how do you know the detective geek’s name?”

Shinichi decides to cut in. “It is most likely that he overheard it from Ran when she came over to speak to me.” Kuroba nods and smiles, he then offers a hand. Shinichi makes a questioning sound at the offered appendage. “What about a last name, Shinichi-san? Unless you want me to refer you as such?”

Shinichi accepts the handshake tentatively. “Kudou Shinichi. Kudou is just fine. It’s nice to meet you Kuroba-san.” Careful not to make exact contact, Shinichi continues. “However, I don’t appreciate a hand buzzer so early on in our acquaintance. The girls look at him in confusion. “A hand buzzer?” 

Kuroba smile splits into a Cheshire grin. “Well spotted Kudou. Even Hakuba didn’t see my first prank on him before it was too late.” Hakuba? Kaito removes the flesh coloured device from his hand and waves it in the air before returning it to his pocket. “You can call me just Kuroba then.”

Kuroba then turns to the girls and pulls out two pink geraniums. “For you two lovely ladies.” Their eyes blow wide with surprise. “Where did you pull those out from?” On the way to the parlour, Shinichi didn’t remember seeing any explicit flower displays for pink geraniums. Nor did he see any florists on this floor. Perhaps it was one of this own.

Sonoko, the bringer of off-track conversation crows. “Are you a magician?” Kuroba gives a demonstration of shuffling his deck as an answer. “Oh wow!” Ran compliments but also pops the question. “How did you keep your flowers so well intact?”

“A magician never reveals his secrets.” Kuroba’s face morphs into an irritating grin. Shinichi isn’t sure why, but he has the slight urge to kick a soccer ball at Kuroba’s face. “He’s like Kid-sama!” Sonoko squeals. 

This where Shinichi’s mind began to wander. Kid? The last he saw of the thief was about four months ago, one month before Shinichi engaging in the operation against the Black Organisation. 

Shinichi never really told the thief of his identity while he had been masquerading as the infamous Kid Killer. Their final meeting was of a quick and short farewell. Now he thought about it, the thief has been quiet, he usually makes an appearance every month or so. But Shinichi didn’t get the chance to resume this train of thought before he was being poked on the cheek. “What?”

Kuroba retracts his finger and makes a face of innocence. “Kudou, I was asking if you still like Kid-sama or not.” Shinichi blinked. “What?” It seemed to be that in the course of his thoughts, Ran had declared that Shinichi himself was an avid fan of the said phantom thief. 

Shinichi wouldn’t be surprised if Ran was using this as a form of revenge against him. She never really let it down when he confessed to her that he found Kid’s heists something to look forward to after dealing with murder cases, one after another.

“Well, Shinichi is a detective after all. And Kid himself is a huge mystery. Of he would be a drawn to the topic of Kid.” Sonoko then proceeds to make an inappropriate comment which causes Ran to drag her away. “Please forget the last ten seconds of what you just heard,” Shinichi beseeched.

Following his advice, Kuroba attempted to reignite the conversation. “So Kudou. What about your cousin?” The confusion on his face must have been apparent as Kuroba himself pulled a perplexed expression. “You know. Your cousin, the Kid Killer.” Still silent in confusion and now, shock, Shinichi stares unblinking. 

Maybe it was from the look on Shinichi’s face as Kuroba quickly tack on the comment. “I’m not a crazed stalker, I swear.” Now undeterred by Shinichi’s lack of response, Kuroba continues to speak. “I searched your name earlier because it sounded familiar.”

It is when Kuroba holds his phone up for Shinichi to see that the spliced images of himself being compared to well, himself, Edogawa Conan. “I saw on some rumour sites that you’re related to that Edogawa kid.” Kuroba scrolls down to point at the online article open on his phone. “Makes sense since you two look pretty much identical.” 

Still staring at Kuroba’s phone, Shinichi is unsure of what to say. He only blinks back into focus when Kuroba speaks up again. “Forgive me for being insensitive. But, what happened to him?” In a search for more answers, Kuroba began to lean even closer. “Where did he go?”

Soundlessly swallowing, Shinichi retorts with a question of his own. “Why do you want to know?” Maybe it was just him, but Kuroba looked slightly put out by the deflection on his part. “After all, he is my cousin.” Kuroba only nods at the point.

Kuroba pauses for a moment as if he is trying out a multitude of varying reasons to find the one which would get him the answers he was searching for. “It’s because he’s just a cool and genius of a kid you know,” he says lamely but then must have found a resolution as his next words held a slight tension behind them. “I just find it to be suspicious when he just upped and vanished.”

Hearing the muffled frustration in Kuroba’s voice, Shinichi counters in slight disconcertment. “Why do you care about the kid who kept thwarting Kid’s plans?” Shinichi then frowns when Kuroba tilts his head to scratch at his cheek. “It was just a family thing.” He goes over the cover story in his head and practically recites it. “His parents found a stable job in the states, so he has reunited with them.” Wishing nothing more than for the conversation to end, Shinichi rudely opens up the book and practically buries his face between the pages. “That’s all.”

Neither of the two make any moves to shift back to their respective spots on the bench. Shinichi himself didn’t realise this as he tried to pour all of his focus into the book in hopes of a distraction. On the other hand, Kuroba did and perhaps decided to not speak up in an act of retaliation for Shinichi’s preceding impoliteness. Thus, the two remained essentially shoulders touching as they return to their business in silence.

Waiting for Ran and Sonoko to finish their piercing sessions had become a bore. Shinichi had already finished the book, where it indeed did end in Janet’s utter loneliness whilst surround in her ever-ongoing tragedy. He is sure that he had placed the book into his lap when his mind had begun to fall into thought. But Shinichi was unsure to when he had fallen asleep.

It was nice. Comfortable. Enough that Shinichi nearly forgot to wonder how he was so comfortable sleeping in a piercing parlour. 

Much like the past, Shinichi has always had a horrible grasp on proper sleeping schedules. It wasn’t exactly his fault anyway. He never asked for a serial murderer to start a twisted game of treasure hunt where the clues were the corpses of their indiscriminately chosen victims.

Plus with the addition of his schoolwork which was majority catch up work for his missing two years, his days were busy on end. So of course, sleep was sacrificed in favour of education and justice.

But that doesn’t mean that Shinichi can’t fully appreciate the beauty of a nap. 

Regrettably, like all good things, even this nap must come to an end. Thus, it was almost devastating when the tranquil darkness was interrupted by the irritatingly familiar chittering of the youngest Suzuki. Both stubborn and lazy in shifting, Shinichi stubbornly decides to keep his eyes closed as he begrudgingly tries to wake up. 

“Shi….chi…wa….up…” That sounded like Ran. “Co…. taku….” Then followed by an irksome squeal. Shinichi grumbled his complaints, knowing well who of which that squeal belonged to, and could feel the sound taunt his eardrums. “Meitan….kun….time..wa…up..” Who? 

Bleary eyes that were still foggy with sleep, Shinichi lets out another groan. “…What?” His grumbled question was met with further giggles, however, this time from Ran. Still drowsy, Shinichi squints and slowly comes to comprehend his new ‘view’ of the world. “Where…?” He then saw the audience of four as Ran and Sonoko were joined by Kuroba’s friends from earlier. Where was Kuroba then?

His current pillow started to shift from beneath his cheek. Pillow? Looking up, Shinichi met Kuroba’s mirth filled eyes. Make that an audience of five. “Hi, sleeping beauty.” Shinichi realised his mistake and let out a garbled shout of surprise; like a cat’s first meeting with water, he propelled himself from the other teen. This effectively startled the group.

Alas, if it not for the hand around his wrist, Shinichi would have ended up onto the tiled floor. But when hearing Sonoko’s obnoxious laughter, Shinichi decided that he would have much-preferred unconsciousness via head trauma, then continuing to be pressed up against Kuroba.

Either oblivious to Sonoko’s joy at Shinichi’s utter embarrassment, Kuroba continues to remain innocently silent. Somehow, he had taken Shinichi book and started reading it himself. 

Ignoring the apparent ‘theft’ for now, Shinichi focuses on apologising to Kuroba. “I’m so sorry.” He awkward offers, because what could you say after falling asleep on someone. Luckily, Ran decided to come in and save him from any further humiliation as she took the reins of the conversation.

“Sorry about Shinichi, Kaito-kun.” Ran giggles. “This detective otaku has been running on coffee and fumes since he got a case dropped into his lap a couple of days ago.” Shinichi’s eye twitches at the metaphorical and physical jab from Ran. “But he promised to join Sonoko and me today, so he couldn’t go home to catch up on sleep.” She even started to pet him on the head, a habit gained from his time as Conan.

Maybe his brain was still asleep, but it took till the end of Ran’s explanation that Shinichi realised that Ran had already moved onto first-name basis for the other teen. How long was he asleep for?! Kuroba turns to him with a grin. “Don’t worry about it, Kudou. It was only ten minutes.”

Still embarrassed, Shinichi stutters out another apology. And Sonoko like the she-devil she decides to add her own comment. “I got plenty of pics though.” Smirking deviously, she waves her phone right in Shinichi’s face. His sleeping face on display as it was pressed, buried, into Kuroba’s shoulder.

Omake

Silently cursing Ran for her fearsome karate skills and ability to guilt-trip him with a single look. Shinichi now had Kuroba’s number. Whom of which had decided that some random stranger falling asleep on him was a sign of established friendship.

At the time, Shinichi wanted to protest but Ran’s existence in the equation was a double-edged sword. So now, Shinichi would have a constant reminder of today’s mortifying incident, whether it be by Ran’s hand of good intentions, or Kuroba’s hand of friendship. He already established the evitability that Sonoko would pull up the photos whenever possible, so he didn’t want to think about it any further.

Hearing the sound of a new message, Shinichi pulled out his phone. Was Kuroba already texting him? He froze upon reading the notification.

**_From._ **

**_1412:_ **

**_《Want to meet up sometime? Ow <_ ** **_》_ **

Reputation be damned, Shinichi was going to turn back and find Kuroba. Just so he could strangle the thief into his next life cycle.

**Author's Note:**

> I procrastinated on my philosophy essay to write this. But man I had this in my notes for a good couple of months and was hella keen to write it since it was so unreal that it actually happened. 
> 
> The title and summary are lame, I'm sorry. But I titled all my notes for this as "Wholesome bios in a piercing parlour" and I barely even wrote about that in this fic. Man, I was more caught up with writing about Janet. Rip Janet. 
> 
> Originally I was going to make this more explicit in terms of hinting Kaishin but meh. When this happened the guys were very good and wholesome bros - get a homie who lets you nap on them and cuddle you platonically.  
> I was the one trying to stop one of the others from getting a navel piercing because she does water polo. And also because she is underage whilst the rest of us are irresponsible adults trying to convince my other adult friend to get a genital piercing. 
> 
> TLDR; So, I did not want to taint that wholesomeness with my horrible take on romance as a person who is still a single virgin. All my chances of dating have flown out of the window. Rip the guy I actually had a romantic interest in.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed! Leave a comment - whether it be a "Good job" or constructive criticism or just plain mean. Sorry for any mistakes as well, my usual beta - Scheherazade - is busy with her philosophy essay. I hate mine, it's a little stitched up abomination of poorly structured sentences and fancy-sounding made-up words.


End file.
